


Rough Week

by taylor_tut



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allergies, Delusions, Fever, Nightmares, Pain, Sick Character, Sick Fic, Sickness, Vomit, Vomiting, delusional, headache
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 19:37:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11259576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: It's been a rough week for the paladins, especially Lance.





	Rough Week

It had been a rough week for the paladins.

On Monday, Shiro had woken up from a post-traumatic nightmare in the middle of the night. Lance had heard him clambering down the hall–in his anxious daze, his footfalls were always heavy, and Lance was a light sleeper–so he brewed two cups of herbal tea and joined him in the common room.

It wasn’t until about 4:00 in the morning that Shiro finally fell asleep again, and Lance had covered him in a blanket, washed the tea mugs, and went back to bed. At 6:00, the alarms went off to start training.

So sure, one night of missed sleep was okay. He was a little tired, maybe, but overall, he could deal. He sparred, trained, conversed.

Tuesday, they trained in the evening on a planet whose flora Pidge was highly allergic to. Lance could tell, even though she tried her best to hide it, and had rushed to her rescue as soon as the others had gone into their respective rooms. However, this attack was stubborn, and it had been hours before she’d finally been able to breathe again.

Another late night, again, he could handle. A bit of a headache had taken up residence behind his eyes, but nothing terrible.

Wednesday, they’d trained in the Lions, and Hunk had gotten sick. Or maybe it was a stomach bug or food poisoning, who could say? Either way, Lance had spent the majority of the night rinsing out his trash can and rubbing circles into his back.

He was starting to get tired, now. Training was difficult, and when he stood, things went dark for a brief moment. The headache went from a dull ache to a moderate throbbing, and his throat felt scratchy, but that was probably just from yelling during training. It was fine. He’d get some sleep tonight, for sure.

Except Keith had a breakdown. And Lance had to deal with that. He’d lit Keith’s lavender candle and rubbed his shoulders until he’d fallen asleep close to 3. But it was Keith’s week to clean the training room, and he’d just woken from a healing pod two days before, and he was still stressed.

So Lance had stayed up late finishing his to-do list. He could have finished it faster if his muscles weren’t so achy and stiff, or if the training room weren’t so hot.

He wasn’t sure how he fell asleep polishing the training weapons, but that’s where he woke up. Keith was the first one up–no surprise there, he usually was on these nights.

“Lance?” he called gently, prodding the blue paladin with his foot. Lance stirred and winced against the ache in his limbs when he stretched.

“Oh, hey, Keith,” Lance said in a voice that sounded rough and scratchy from just having woken up, and he cleared his throat. “How are you feeling?”

Keith smiled a rare and gentle smile. “I’m good. Thank you for all your help, and for–well, trying to clean the training room, at least.” Keith plucked the rag from Lance’s hands and sat next to him.

“You should go back to bed. You don’t look like you slept well,” Keith said, polishing a blade.

“Yeah, this wasn’t the most comfortable place to nap,” Lance admitted sheepishly, “My back is killing me.” Keith looked sympathetic.

“I’m sorry–”

“None of that,” Lance interrupted, “I did it because I wanted to.” Keith nodded. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Lance stand and wobble heavily, nearly toppling to one side. Keith started and set the rag down in preparation to help, but Lance brushed him off, though one hand was still dizzily clutching his forehead.

“I’m fine,” he preemptively shrugged off Keith’s concern, “Just stood up too fast.”

“You should drink water,” Keith suggested, “I’ll bring you a pouch. Go to bed.” That sounded like a pretty good plan to Lance, so he made his way to his bedroom and sipped the water that Keith brought to him moments later. “Want me to tell Shiro you’re not feeling well? You don’t look like you should be training.”

“I’m good,” Lance reassured, “just tired. I’ll just nap for a while and be ready to go by afternoon training.”

“Breakfast is in an hour,” Keith said, “and you need more sleep than that.”

“I’m not very hungry, anyway,” Lance told him, bundling himself up in his blankets and turning away from Keith, “I think I’ll skip it. Just come wake me up when we’re ready to train?”

Keith hesitated, but agreed, and turned off the lights as he left.

Not half an hour later, the alarms started to blare. Lance shot up in bed and noticed for the first time just how bad the throbbing pain in his head had gotten, and groaned, shoving his palms into his eyes.

Tiredly, he dressed halfway in his paladin armor, forgetting his helmet entirely, and shuffled into the common room to wait for instructions.

Allura was standing in the middle of the room with a timer, which she stopped as soon as Lance became the final person to enter.

“This was good, everyone; much better,” she smiled in rare approval, “but Lance, you’re not fully dressed. Had this been a real emergency, you’d not have full force.” He knew it was true, so he nodded.

Keith felt guilty, knowing that it was only because Lance had been up all night helping him that he was being yelled at now, but Lance seemed to shrug it off without much reaction, so Keith didn’t feel the need to intervene.

“I decided to call an impromptu morning training session,” Shiro announced, far too awake for this time of morning. “So far, our morning training has been the weakest, and Allura wanted to time your response time again, so I thought we could kill two birds with one stone.”

There was a collective grumble from the group, but they stood reluctantly and followed Shiro to the training room.

“I have to go get my helmet,” Lance said tiredly. Shiro looked worried for a moment as he studied his pale face, the bags under his eyes, and his sluggish movements.

“Are you alright?” he asked. “You said that you couldn’t sleep on Monday, but I thought you were just trying to hide the fact that I woke you up. Are you homesick again?”

Psh. Only every second of the day.

“I’m fine,” he said instead, “I’ll be down in a minute.”

Lance had made the mistake of sitting down to put on his helmet. His legs were shaking with the effort of standing, and he was so, so tired.

He woke up this time to Hunk in his room, shaking his shoulders lightly.

“Lance, wake up; we’re going to the Lions to train,” he explained.

“Weren’t we sparring?” Lance asked confusedly.

“We finished already. Shiro said you could just spar twice tomorrow. Did you fall asleep getting dressed?”

“Must have,” Lance muttered, rubbing his hand down his face. His nap couldn’t have been more than 15 or 20 minutes, and it wasn’t long enough.

“Is this because you stayed up with me two nights ago?” he asked, looking guilty.

“No, Hunk, of course not,” Lance partially lied. “I just have a little bit of a headache, that’s all.”

“You look terrible,” Hunk worried. “Maybe you should tell Shiro–”

Lance stood slowly and shoved past Hunk maybe a little more aggressively than he needed to.

“Come on; we can’t keep the others waiting.”

-  
-

Lance was quiet on the comms today, and Lance was never quiet on the comms. Though Pidge was usually the most annoyed by his constant chatter, it was what made her the most concerned about its absence.

“Lance, you hangin’ in there?” she asked, looking at his face on the live feed. Lance looked peaky at best, but he managed to smile and nod confidently at her.

“Just focusing,” he replied simply. She knew that he’d had a rough night with her a few days ago, but she was feeling fine now, and she’d been the one who was ill, so he’d definitely had more than enough time to recover from their late night. Maybe he was just focusing. She wrote off the distant look in his eyes as thinking and the red flush to his cheeks as exertion.

“Maybe he’s crabby because he skipped breakfast,” Hunk suggested.

Ugh, Lance wished Hunk wouldn’t talk about food right now. Even just the thought of eating made his stomach roll.

“We’ll call it early and get lunch, then,” Shiro agreed. No one as thin as Lance should be working this hard on an empty stomach.

The Lions landed and Hunk went straight to the kitchen to whip up something for them to eat. Lance headed straight for the couch, seemingly not even noticing Pidge standing in his way, and running into her full-force, knocking them both to the ground.

This is where things started to get fuzzy for Lance. He could feel himself falling to the ground, and he could hear Pidge yelling at him. She sounded angry. He realized vaguely that he should apologize, and he’s relatively sure that he did, but everything, even his own voice, sounded so far away. Pidge was suddenly helping him stand–how had she gotten to her feet so fast?–and telling him that he looked really exhausted and should sleep, guiding him to the couch. He wasn’t aware he was shivering until a blanket was placed over his body, and sleep was immediate.

“Something’s not right with Lance,” Pidge expressed, joining Keith, Hunk, and Shiro in the kitchen.

“Yeah, what else is new?” Keith asked sarcastically.

“No, I mean he seems really exhausted. Way too tired for someone who slept through breakfast and sparring.”

“You think he’s sick?” Hunk asked, wondering if perhaps his stomach virus had been contagious and Lance had come down with it.

“I don’t think so,” Keith joined in. “He was just… he was up late last night helping me with something. He didn’t really get any sleep at all, I don’t think.”

“Last night?” Hunk asked, and Keith nodded. “He was up with me two nights ago, nearly the whole night. I got sick, and he spent the night taking care of me.”

“Shit,” Pidge confessed, “he helped me through an all night allergy marathon the night before that.”

“And on Monday he joined me in the common room when I couldn’t sleep,” Shiro added.

The Paladins stood in silence for a moment, letting that information sink in.

“So how much do you think he’s slept all week?” Shiro asked.

“Maybe an hour here and there?” Keith guessed. “Plus training and missions.”

“How did we let him get this exhausted without noticing?” Hunk wondered aloud.

The team followed Shiro to the couch where Lance was still asleep.

“He’s shivering still,” Pidge said. Keith left to scrounge up a few more blankets while Hunk went back to the kitchen to prepare a bowl of food-goo for Lance.

“We should wake him to eat something,” Hunk suggested, “He hasn’t eaten all day, and if he’s gonna sleep through the rest of the evening, then we should make sure he’s got something in his system.”

Shiro nodded and shook Lance’s shoulders gently with his flesh arm.

“Hey, Lance,” he whispered gently, “Wake up; Hunk made you lunch.” Lance slowly and blearily opened his eyes, watching as the blurry shapes of his friends spun and danced in front of him. Vaguely, he realized that a bowl of something warm was being set in his lap and that he should thank whoever had set it there.

God, why was it so cold in the castle?

Keith must have agreed with his thoughts because he was suddenly being enveloped in the blanket from the Red paladin’s bed. It helped a marginal amount.

Lance appreciated the food, but he didn’t want it. He set it on the ground and rolled over to face the back of the couch.

“Aw, geez,” Shiro sighed sympathetically. “I know you’re tired, but you’ve got to eat a little bit before you can go back to sleep.”

“Later,” Lance promised in a rough voice. He coughed to clear his throat. “Jus’ lemme take a nap before I finish my homework.”

“Homework?” Pidge echoed, sounding slightly amused, “Poor Lance; must be dreaming he’s back at Garrison.”

“The sooner you eat, the sooner you can go to sleep,” Keith promised, extending the bowl once more to the blue paladin.

“I’ll sit him up,” Shiro announced, hoping that maybe being moved would rouse Lance enough to eat at least a few bites. Lance groaned. “I know,” Shiro comforted.

Shiro physically set the spoon into Lance’s hand and watched as his completely limp fingers dropped it. “Lance,” he scolded, and Lance looked more fearful than he’d ever seen him. Lance had fought Galra without this much terror in his eyes.

He flinched hard back into the couch, away from Shiro, which sent the bowl of food tumbling to the floor, but that didn’t matter right now–what mattered was that Lance seemed to be exhausted to the point of delusional.

“Lance, buddy, it’s me, Shiro,” Shiro stated calmly.

Lance seemed to gain a little more clarity for just a moment, and Shiro internally celebrated that he was finally waking up.

“Sorry,” Lance apologized, ‘I knocked that over.” Lance’s eyes were focused intently on the bowl on the ground.

“It’s okay,” Hunk placated, “We’ll clean it up.”

But all Lace apparently heard was “clean it up,” because that’s exactly what he did. He stood, too fast, wobbling heavily, to get a towel, and started to wipe the floor blindly, missing the mess entirely more often than not.

“Hey, it’s fine; don’t worry about that,” Keith said, taking the rag from his hands. Lance frowned, looking very confused before sudden realization seemed to spread across his face.

“I was going to clean the training room for you,” he exclaimed, his voice catching on the inflection, sending him into a rough coughing fit that was caught by his elbow.

“Lance?” Shiro tried, “Are you feeling okay?”

Lance nodded. “'M good,” he promised, “I’ll go to class in a minute; don’t be mad. Just need a minute. My head hurts.”

Maybe Lance wasn’t just tired after all.

Shiro pressed his hand against Lance’s forehead and damn near panicked.

“He’s boiling,” Shiro announced. “He’s delusional.”

Hunk frowned. “How long do you think he’s been working through this for?”

“There’s no way to tell,” Pidge replied, “but he’s definitely been off all day.”

“He’s been quiet all week, if I think about it,” Keith offered.

“Why wouldn’t you say anything about it, dummy?” Pidge asked, running her fingers through Lance’s hair while Shiro stood to get ice packs and fever reducers.

“You guys needed me,” he slurred. At least he was coherent enough for that.

“You know you’re allowed to need us too, right?” Hunk asked. Lance didn’t reply, but he had never felt better-taken care of in his whole life.


End file.
